INTERVIEW
Jo Greenfield FCM Travel Solutions’ general manager
on working in a fiercely competitive field I
T SEEMS TRAVEL IS IN JO GREENFIELD’S BLOOD. She first joined FCM’s parent company, Flight Centre, as a travel consultant more than 17 years ago. After completing her degree, she had
been travelling the world for two years. “I studied Spanish and Portuguese at Leeds university,” she says. “And all I wanted to do was travel.”
While on the Inca trail, a fellow backpacker advised her she should get a job with Flight Centre. “Back then, Flight Centre had 50 people in the UK. We’ve now got 2,000,” she says. “I started as a travel consultant in Goodge Street, and I opened a new shop a year later in Holborn.” After her second maternity leave, she decided she wanted to work in the group’s corporate travel division, FCM. “The last five years
Jo Greenfield
service delivery above anything. You’ve also got to invest in technology to keep going forward – but on small margins.” This is a conundrum, she says, that will see smaller TMCs struggling – not helped by
“It’s about automating the stuff you can’t add value to, and focusing on account management and the strategic business plan element”
have been the most challenging but the most exciting, and we have grown, doubled the profits and brought the business into the future. It’s become a real global player.” FCM ranked fourth in BBT’s annual Leading 50 TMCs guide this year, with UK sales of £643 million in 2015. Earlier this year, the company launched Travel Essentials – an ‘end-to-end’ service that includes visa and passport solutions, health consultancy and travel insurance – with three levels of service offered. “We need to be real partners with our customers, rather than just transacting and giving data, which is what it’s been in the past,” says Jo. FCM is part of Australian-based travel
group Flight Centre, which owns operations in 14 countries and has a presence in 92. The company recently bought a Dutch TMC, and there are more acquisitions in the pipeline, says Jo. While she is highly optimistic about FCM’s position – she says the company saw “double-digit” growth last year – she does admit that TMCs operate in a fiercely competitive field. “It’s a tough market to be in. You’ve got to lead by improving your
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BSP (Billing and Settlement Plan) payments going fortnightly. “There is consolidation and there will be more. Look at airlines and hotels – there’s no reason it’s not the same for TMCs,” she says.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE
So, in this competitive environment, how does a TMC differentiate? “As a big company we go across the retail and corporate markets globally. We are looking at buying DMCs [destination management companies] in Asia, we are looking at buying hotels – it’s a unique product range. It’s having the whole thing – =expertise across all the brands, of which we have more than 30 globally. “We are valuable to a hotel because we can fill it at the weekend with retail and during week with corporate – it means we’ll get the good deals and the waivers and favours. Which is where you stand out.” Talking of hotels, how does FCM help buyers with that recurrent pain of hotels targeting travellers directly? Jo says so far the TMC has been successful in communicating that travellers can get the same benefits,
By PAUL REVEL
such as free wifi and loyalty points, by booking through the TMC channel – as well as using its “brilliant” supplier relationships to extract these benefits from the hotel chains. “It’s part of the reason we are moving to Amadeus, because its capability to pull different sources into the booking tools and into the GDS is amazing. So we can pull in APIs and external suppliers and still give the customer the choice. The minute you don’t do that, that’s when you start losing people and creating leakage.”
OUTSOURCED TRAVEL EXPERTS Today’s airlines, with their dynamic yield management algorithms and high-load factors, often seem to have the upper hand when it comes to negotiations. So to what extent should buyers be focusing on supplier deals? “The airlines are making money now,” says Jo. “So they are going after market share, pretty aggressively. They are more interested in working with us.”
The example she gives is corporates wanting to retain business class flights but make savings. “The obvious way is to move from direct to indirect carriers. Airlines are chomping at the bit to work with them – card matching, deals and free flights. It’s all about market share and new customers.” I ask her how the TMC model is going to evolve in the next few years. “There definitely will be changes. It’s about automating the stuff you can’t add value to, and really focusing on the account management and the strategic business plan element. A lot of it is about changing behaviour and compliance – actually managing the programme more.” So does this mean TMCs becoming more
like out-sourced travel managers? In some cases, yes, she says. “We have clients that spend £30 million a year on travel, that don’t have a dedicated person for travel. We become more of an outsourced travel expert dealing with policy and programme, and helping them communicate things, and usually working with procurement or finance, to an extent. It’s part of the future of TMCs, and it’s happening already.”
JO GREENFIELD was appointed as GM in 2012. She runs the FCM executive team heading up sales, account management and operations, technology and process improvement, and is responsible for clients who trade in the UK. She joined Flight Centre in 1999 as a travel consultant, running regional teams and setting up the Round the World Experts brand. She moved into FCM in 2011 as London operations leader.
BBT September/October 2016 35
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